COLUMBIA, S.C. – On Thursday, a South Carolina man was sentenced to life in federal prison for killing a Black transgender woman after their secret sexual relationship was exposed.
Daqua Lameek Ritter was sentenced by US District Judge Sherri A. Lydon in federal court in Columbia. Ritter was the nation’s first individual convicted of murdering someone because of their gender identity.
Ritter was convicted of a hate crime in February for fatally shooting Dime Doe in 2019.
“Dime Doe was a brave woman,” US Attorney Adair Ford Boroughs told reporters outside the courthouse after the sentence was imposed. “She lived and she loved as herself, and no one deserves to lose their life for that.”
Prosecutors sought a life sentence without parole based on federal sentencing guidelines. Defense counsel requested a sentence that would allow Ritter to be released from prison someday, claiming there was no evidence that the killing was planned. They included letters for clemency from his mother, sister, grandmother, and two young children.
According to authorities, Ritter shot Doe three times with a.22 caliber revolver after word spread about their relationship in the small hamlet of Allendale.
Doe’s close acquaintances testified that it was well knowledge in Allendale that she had begun her social transition as a woman shortly after graduating from high school. She began dressed in skirts, having her nails done, and wearing extensions. She and her friends talked about the boys they were meeting, including Ritter, whom she met during one of his frequent summer visits from New York to stay with family.
However, text exchanges seized by the FBI indicated that Ritter tried to keep their relationship as private as possible, prosecutors claimed. He reminded her to delete their conversations from her phone, and hundreds of texts written in the month preceding her death were erased.87
Ritter informed Doe that his major girlfriend at the time, Delasia Green, had insulted him with a homophobic term after learning about their affair.
Ritter’s defense team claimed the sampling was simply a “snapshot” of their messages. They pointed to numerous encounters in which Doe encouraged Ritter or praised her for her compassion.
At trial, prosecutors produced police interviews in which Ritter stated that he did not see Doe the day she died. However, body camera footage from Doe’s traffic check revealed Ritter’s unique left wrist tattoo on a person in the passenger seat hours before police discovered her collapsed in the car, parked in a driveway.
There was no tangible evidence that pointed to Ritter. According to defense lawyer Lindsey Vann, state law enforcement never processed Ritter’s voluntary gunshot residue test, and the couple’s close relationship and frequent automobile rides made it unsurprising that Ritter was with her.
Xavier Pinckney, a co-defendant, was sentenced to three years and nine months in jail earlier this year for lying to authorities about his knowledge of Doe’s slaying.
Although federal officials have previously prosecuted hate crimes based on gender identification, the cases never went to trial. In 2017, a Mississippi man was sentenced to 49 years in prison as part of a plea agreement after admitting to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.
Reference:
South Carolina man gets life in prison in killing of Black transgender woman